The fountain was made for the courtyard of Jacopo de' Pazzi's Florentine palace. Pazzi family devices, including dolphins, adorn the three points on top of the base. A bulbous fluted stem originally connected the basin to the foot, as seen in a nineteenth-century engraving.

In 1478, Jacopo de' Pazzi paid with his life for leading a failed plot to overthrow the rival merchant family of the Medici. Later that year, the architect Giuliano da Maiano petitioned Jacopo's heirs to reimburse himself and his brothers, the sculptors Benedetto and Giovanni, for work done on various Pazzi projects that may well have included the fountain.